Watching Fran, in the video above, talk about her home in Altadena broke me.
The enormity of the loss in the LA area is hard to comprehend and is ongoing as the fires continue to expand and new ones pop up.
For people who either don’t live in LA or have never lived in LA, there’s this idea that everyone impacted by the fires is wealthy and doesn’t need support.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
While there are some very wealthy people who have lost their homes—people who have the resources to rebuild—there are so many people who have been impacted by the fires who desperately need support.
People in communities like Altadena, where fires have ravaged so many homes, are, for the most part, not wealthy.
Many of them have lived in their homes for decades and bought them when Altadena was a much more affordable community.
There are also many renters who have been impacted by the fires.
And this doesn’t even address all of the hourly workers who have lost customers and clients now that so many houses have burned down.
I have linked to two GoFundMe pages below.
The first is the GoFundMe Foundation’s fundraiser, which will provide grants to people in need.
Since the money is going to the official GoFundMe foundation, your donations are tax-deductible.
The second link is for a page that lists GoFundMe pages that GoFundMe has verified and authenticated.
You can feel comfortable that your donations to any of these pages (the listing of verified pages is over 13 pages long) will go to people in need.
There will be so much more to do.
GoFundMe Foundation grants for people in need (donations are tax-deductible): bit.ly/3DM3djb
Verified individual GoFundMe pages: bit.ly/40hiBvQ
(Video by Brian Entin of NewsNation)
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Heartbreaking. Cannot even begin to imagine.